Two problems (one HTML, one CSS)

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

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The HTML problem is with this page:

http://www.meganjack.com/ITCSurvey/index.html

In Netscape 4.08 there's a space in between the top table and the second one with the content. I've tried condensing my code, but no luck. Anyone know what's causing this?

http://www.meganjack.com/ITCSurvey/index2.html

I've defined a border for the table, but it's not showing up at all. I've tried inline and in the external stylesheet and neither way works - why?

Oh, and I know that there's probably a lot of extra junk in the code there - I'll go back over it later so don't bother telling me about any of that.

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

Seem to have solved problem no. 2.... I think...

Busy's picture

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just had a quick look at your code, in the very top table you have colspan="2" and class="bodytables" which isnt in your style sheet.

I doubt this is the problem but wont be helping, I'll have another look in a sec

Busy's picture

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Joined: May 2001

This line is causing the problem

remove it and all is ok in NS4.7 even with the above errors left in (which you didnt want to know about - sorry)

Suzanne's picture

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Well if you know it's not xhtml 1.0 transitional code and will be fixing that, I'll not comment on that.

In the second page, the border is showing up for me on the mac in N4.x browsers (I have three). Sorry, I can't duplicate the problem, but if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that because there is a class listed for the table, and nothing in the stylesheet, it's hanging on that.

As for the second one, I have no idea. I see the gap, though. What's with the colspan for one row of stuff?

Maybe if you clean out the stuff that isn't staying and validate it, you'll catch the problem?

sorry!

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

I don't know if you saw my previous post, but I did manage to fix the border problem... dont' know how, but it works now anyway.

Alright, well, thanks for trying. I didn't really get a chance to run a validator on this one yet - I just wanted to get it working so I could show the client something today if possible. I am aware that there are some problems in there and the code is going to need a complete working over before it's finalized. I was getting rather frusturated with it, which is why there's so many problems in there (I kept changing things and didn't completely remove the evidence). I was hoping that someone else could help.

Suzanne's picture

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whoops, no, I missed all the other posts! Drat! I need to type faster, lol...

Most of the little things that the validator caught aren't things that would blow display, anyway, when I looked later.

Are you still having problems? (doh, let me look and then I'll try again, lol)

Suzanne's picture

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http://archivist.incutio.com/css-discuss/?id=7972&highlight=gap+Netscape+7

this gave me a problem today, even though, darnit all, I know about the problem.

Busy's right -- the DIV is causing problems. Specifically, it's the padding in the DIV. Remove that and put it, if necessary, into the @import stylesheet and it's all good.

Edited to add: N4.x has issues with padding on/in many elements, as well as borders on hyperlinks and form elements and images (set in the CSS). Beware. Smiling

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

Quote: Originally posted by Suzanne
Well if you know it's not xhtml 1.0 transitional code and will be fixing that, I'll not comment on that.

I'm sorry, but I'm really confused about this statement. I am aware that there are a few things that aren't validating right now, but IMO they are fairly minor (a few alt tags, table background images which I'm just not in the habit of doing in a stylesheet yet). You make it sound like there is something I'm doing wrong systematically thoughout the code. I've closed all the tags, quoted all atributes, everything is in lower case .... ??? So what am I missing? Or is it wrong to code xhtml without it validating perfectly? I tend to think that it's not such a terrible thing to let a few things slide (like marginheight/marginwidth), or am I wrong about that?

Suzanne's picture

She has: 5,507 posts

Joined: Feb 2000

Well, yes, that is, it's not XHTML 1.0 Transitional if it doesn't validate, is it? It's something else. Mostly XHTML 1.0? Partly compliant?

It's not a judgement, just an observation. With the current standards, it either is or it isn't.

Personally (and I mean how I do things), I let Netscape 4.x have a light margin around the page, and I find using CSS for table backgrounds much, much easier than doing it in the HTML.

I am militant about alt attributes in img tags, though. It's just not nice to alternative browsers to let them slide. Heck, in some cases, it's not nice to not think about how it will be read -- http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html for instance gives you a really good idea about how it's read out and how it looks on a text browser or pda without graphics support.

Does that make more sense? Smiling

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

Oh, it's close enough - it's not even finished yet anyway. I'm sure this makes me terrible web coder, but I feel that it's okay to be slightly imperfect sometimes, espcially at early stages in the game. I was planning on fixing most of those problems, but I didn't realize that I couldn't even call it xhtml until it was 100% perfect.

The marginheight/marginwidth will probably be staying in for the sake of the target audience. I guess I'll just call it fake xhtml, or bad html or whatever.. or maybe i'll just take out the doctype or something and call it nothing, or go back to html 4.0... I don't know... I'll have to decide what to do about that.

Suzanne's picture

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lol, there's nothing wrong with it being called xhtml. It's just not xhtml 1.0 transitional. Smiling

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

I just wanted to let you all know that I solved the problem with the gaps in netscape - it wasn't the padding but the display: block I had put in for Mozilla/NS 6/7. Netscape 4.x seemed to want them to be displayed inline, so I just did different stylesheets for each, so Netscape 4 gets display: inline and the others get display: block.

All settled Smiling

Suzanne's picture

She has: 5,507 posts

Joined: Feb 2000

Glad you got it resolved. With testing it locally, either removing the padding or changing the display worked. Changing the display with two stylesheets is a better solution, I think. Good job!

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